little things

Today, two things made me happy: 

1) A bunch of plastic tags labeling body parts.

2) Doing nothing productive after 6pm.

Something made me sad:

1) I can't remember the last time I did nothing productive after 6pm. 

So for anyone who is still hung up on the tagging body parts thing: I like cadaver lab again! One of my anatomy partners had the brilliant idea to order plastic zip-tie labels to identify all the structures we have dissected in our body. Perhaps this sounds disgusting (to non-med people) or "gunner-like" (to med people), but seeing the vasculature of the abdomen as a beautiful labeled web instead of a mess I have to memorize reaffirmed how much the body amazes me. 

Also, I made myself take the night off. I am embarrassed to admit how many times I had to tell myself that I wasn't allowed to go back to school to study. I went to yoga, cooked dinner, read a book, watched Modern Family (oh that show makes me so happy). Now I'm blogging. 

Why don't I do this more often? I got into "busy mode" where it felt odd to do anything but go from one thing to the next. I forgot how sitting around doing nothing centers me. It's amazing how quickly I forgot.  

you know you're in medical school when:

1. Your partner at ballroom club tells you to put your hand on his inferior deltoid.
2. You talk about dissection at dinner and everyone keeps eating.
3. Wearing a white coat makes you feel "pretty."
4. A joke about the protein "map kinase kinase kinase" (I can't make this stuff up) is the best joke you've heard all week.

More to come... I think I'm going to make this an occasionally regular thing. Unfortunately all the things that struck me when I first started seem entirely normal to me now. Med school is making me weirder.

fairy tale

And now, my medical school fairy tale has come to a close. Don't get me wrong, I've been busy up until this point, but busy being social. Every week day has been celebrated by a party at some point (including Monday). I have gone to ballroom club and yoga club. I have "studied" while hanging out with people. I have gone to class (most of the time), learned some interesting things, and met some awesome people.

And now real life sets in. Our first test is in two weeks, so everyone is beginning to gear up for that. Our elective classes are starting, so we have class after 3 pm sometimes (who does that? wow how my view of life changed so quickly after undergrad). Also, I was under the false impression that extra-curricular activities would only occur during lunch. Suddenly we have meetings in the afternoons/evenings almost every day. The happy-go-lucky stage of meeting everyone is over, so now relationships are getting more complicated. I have a cough and some sort of cold (which I can't diagnose in spite of my six-ish weeks of medical education). I can't hear the splitting of the S2 heart sound on myself, or anyone else for that matter. I can't find my point of maximal impulse - which is apparently somewhere under the left breast - and I feel ridiculous trying to feel myself up to find it.

I am tired and a little overwhelmed. Sorry for making you read my self-pity. Well, I guess I didn't make you read it, so sorry if you're sorry you did.

white coats

Yesterday a classmate went to volunteer for a free health screening, where medical students (who know nothing) are allowed to take blood pressure, blood glucose levels, and calculate BMI. While volunteering, he met a woman in the "morbidly obese" category and told her that she should lose some weight. Immediately she began asking him questions like "What should I eat to lose weight?" "What diet should I go on?" etc. He was astounded that when he puts on that white coat, people believe he knows something, and trust him to give good advice. A simple garment creates what they call a "fiduciary relationship" based on mutual respect and trust. Not that the relationship is determined only by the white coat - but there is an inherent difference between being an undergrad, shadowing and "wanting" to be a doctor, and a medical student, who will be a doctor. Somehow suddenly we are different.

The privilege of that power is intimidating. At this point in medical school it feels like all the tangibles matter more - the sequence of the branches off the aorta or how g-protein cascades work - but there are moments when I realize becoming a physician is more about the intangibles. It's more about the unique relationship I will hold with my patients. I hope I continue to hold on to that.

med school is awesome. especially on the weekends.

Sorry it's been a while since I posted. This week was the first week med school required anything out of us, so therefore I was really busy. We had a homework assignment due Tuesday and a "quiz" on Thursday (which really covered an amount of material like a test). And we didn't have a single lunch talk! Now they are making us study harder and they stopped feeding us? What's up with that?

I can't think of anything really clever to say right now, which is perhaps why I haven't posted recently. Med school is really fun and occasionally miserable, but it comes in waves that give me an overall happy impression of my life in med school. For instance, yesterday I wanted to vomit when I cut open my cadaver's stomach because it smelled so bad. Anatomy yesterday was terrible in general. The lecture was really boring and the lab was really smelly. It just put me in a bad mood. Plus I was tired because I hadn't caught up on sleep yet. But after that, I spent the entire rest of the day hanging out with friends, which made me feel happy about life in general. I love the flexibility of my schedule and the amount of time I get to spend socializing (at least at this point). In my view, what I'm learning is important, but establishing relationships and spending time with people is more important to becoming a great doctor. How can you relate to your patients if you've spent your whole life reading a book? Then again, maybe that's just the excuse I'm using to have a fun weekend guilt-free. :)

conundrum

This afternoon I planned on going out to lunch with some of my friends from undergrad. At the same time, there is a TA session for physiology. Our first problem set is due on Tuesday (after the long weekend), so this is the last time to seek help from someone who isn't a classmate. Only I haven't done the problem set yet. So what do I do? Until I left anatomy lab, I was still vaguely undecided and I hadn't cancelled on my friends yet. At this point hunger was my driving force - anatomy lab makes me incredibly hungry - yeah, a little bit distasteful, I know.

So I cancel. My friends are understanding, they say, "Well, you're in med school now, we get it." I eat food, so now it's guilt instead of hunger gnawing away at me. Will the TA session really help me if I haven't done the work? Should I work right now instead because I already cancelled on my friends? 

So I go to the TA session. The first thing the TA says - "I just wanted to start off by reminding you that this year is pass/fail and this homework assignment is worth 3 points of your total grade." 

Wonderful. So now instead of being in the TA session learning or going out to lunch with my friends, I am blogging. Med school is confusing. "There is no right choice. Only what's right for you." That's what everyone keeps saying. Well, sometimes no choice feels right. All I know for sure is that I was really, really hungry. 

The interesting dilemma about not having grades is not that I'm unmotivated - it's that I'm afraid to be worthlessly over-motivated. Now that's a conundrum.